


Build a nest for me inside your heart

by colorfulmagic



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Asexual Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, F/M, Gen, Hugs, Mildly Dubious Consent, Panic Attacks, Swearing, Tim consents but he feels pretty shitty about it afterwards, discussions about sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24143782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorfulmagic/pseuds/colorfulmagic
Summary: Tim learns some things about his sexuality, and Bruce is there to help pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 11
Kudos: 141





	Build a nest for me inside your heart

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings in End Notes.

Lights flash wildly all around him, and Tim feels the thump of the bass in his bones. He is hot and sweaty, moving in time with the undulating bodies packed all around him in some shitty basement in a frat house where the party is taking place. 

When Tim told Bruce that he was considering going to college, Bruce had been delighted. Tim had never shown much interest in college until then, but with his temporary resignation from the Teen Titans, Tim had realized that perhaps there was more to life than superhero work, and that getting a degree was the first step to having a real future with a job like a normal person. 

All of which lead to Tim at his first college party ever, getting absolutely smashed— also for the first time ever— with some friends he kind of knew from his dorm, and the floor tilting a little as he threw back his fourth Jell-O shot that hour. 

He grasps Marcia’s hips a little tighter and moves against her, feeling the warmth of her body against his. The world truly was starting to look a little wonky now, and Tim feels strangely heavy. 

“Hey Tim,” Marcia murmurs in his ear, bending a little to reach. “Wanna go upstairs and have some fun?”

Marcia was a tall, dark haired girl with a slightly upturned nose. She was a couple years older than him, and she lent him her notes sometimes when he was out sick. 

Tim is aware of what she is offering here, and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. It doesn’t help that the fourth shot he had taken was kicking in now, and he was strangely lightheaded. Marcia seemed to take his silence as a hint, and she was now kissing her way up his jawline. Tim felt frozen in place. This is what fun college guys do, he thought. His dorm mates had just been teasing him the other day for being such a prude, and this is as good a time as any to show them where they can shove it. 

He allows Marcia to lead him upstairs, where the deafening music fades into a steady pounding that he can still hear, and she drags him into a bedroom and locks the door behind him. 

The next parts seem oddly fuzzy to him, and he loses patches of time even while being hyper aware of others. He is aware that they have sex, but he feels oddly disconnected and removed, aware of what is happening but not able to fit the pieces together of how it is so. She flops down beside him when it’s over, and leaves quickly. 

Once when Tim was little, his parents had been scheduled to come home one of the few times a year, and he had been so happy and eager to greet them that he had climbed a tall tree outside their mansion waiting for the sound of their car. The easy breeze or the late hour must have put him to sleep, because the next thing he remembered was the terror of falling, of hearing a sickening crack and the wind knocked out of him. 

That was what he felt like right now: dirty, broken, and knowing with absolute certainty and panic that something is very wrong. 

Tim gets up, unable to stay in that room for one second longer, and puts on his clothes and stumbles out the door. The party is still going hard around him, and he half stumbles with his hands against the wall as he tries to convince himself he is fine. 

It doesn’t work, and he can feel his breath coming in short gasps. Without knowing how he is somehow outside, the air cool against his face. With no direction past the blinding need to get away, Tim starts walking. 

He walks for what seems like hours but could have been minutes for all he knows, and he realizes in some distant part of his brain that he has no idea where he is. It is in some part of town he is not familiar with, the streets dingy and roads bare. 

Tim stumbles down, head between his knees and blind panic overtaking his every thought. Stupid, so stupid, this is why no one stays with you, you can’t even handle getting laid without proving how much of a fuck up you are, this is why your parents didn’t want you. 

He fumbles in his pocket desperately, and hits the button for the first speed dial contact. It rings once, then twice, then picks up. 

“Tim?” a familiar voice asks, baritone and with just the right amount of concern in it that Tim fucking breaks.

“Bruce,” Tim gasps. “Bruce, I don’t— I don’t know where I am, oh god I fucked up, I’m so sorry, Bruce—”

“Tim. Tim I’m going to need you to breathe with me. Can you do that for me? Come on, in,” and Bruce breathed through the phone exaggeratedly, “and out.”

Tim tried to match the breathing Bruce was doing over the phone, and after a few minutes of this was somewhat succeeding. 

“You’re doing so good, son. Now I need you to name something you see in front of you. Anything, it doesn’t matter what.” In the background of the call, Tim could hear quick footsteps and the jangling of keys. Bruce was going somewhere. Where? It was late. 

“I see, I see a seven eleven. It has, uh, it has a broken open sign on it,” Tim said, voice losing some of the breathy panic he had started with. 

“Good. That’s good. Now this is really important, do you see any street signs, anything with a name?”

“Um, no I can’t—” his breath was starting to come out in quick pants again. “Bruce I can't see any.”

“Okay, that’s okay. You’re doing beautifully Tim, so good. Can you tell me another thing you see?”

Bruce walks him through it, demanding Tim in a firm but gentle voice to tell him what he could see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. By the end, Tim still has his head between his legs but he is more coherent than before. He is startled up at the pulling up of a car, Bruce jerking it into park and throwing himself out in the same movement, next to Tim faster than his alcohol addled mind can comprehend. 

His rough hands are warm on Tim’s cheeks, tilting his head slightly to look into his eyes, and something in them must have confirmed something for him because he lifts Tim from the ground with an arm under his knees and another under his neck like he’s a kid, and Tim automatically wraps his arms around his neck and leans his pounding head against his chest. 

Bruce places him on the passenger seat and gets in from the other side. He unscrews a bottle of water from the cup holder and tilts it against Tim’s mouth. “Drink,” he says, and Tim obeys.

The panic from earlier had receded away, and with it Tim can feel the first stirrings of shame in his stomach. Bruce had probably been doing something, important Batman work, and Tim made him come all the way here because he couldn’t handle a stupid party. “Bruce,” he says. “Bruce, listen, I didn’t mean to— you can just leave me here, I’ll be fine walking back to my dorm alone.”

Bruce exhales slowly, and puts the empty water bottle back in the cup holder. “Tim,” he says, his voice very steady. “Here is what is going to happen. We’re going to go get something to eat, because I’m betting you overdid yourself and drank on an empty stomach. Then we are going back to the manor, where you will sleep for at least eight hours. Is that clear?”

Tim nods shakily. “I just,” and his voice cracks. “I just don’t want you wasting time on this, is all.”

Bruce reaches his hand out and grasps Tim’s, holding it even as he starts the car up and shifts into drive. “You’re my kid, Tim. I’m never too busy for you.” 

Tim’s eyes burn, and he settles against the seat as they drive in silence. Bruce’s hand is still sweeping comfortingly over his own, and he can feel the callouses and scars that pepper Bruce’s hand against his. 

They are just reaching the highway that leads to the city when Bruce breaks the silence. “Would you like to tell me what happened,” he asks quietly, no trace of anger in his voice. 

“Can we just— can we please talk about something else?” Tim pleads.

“Alright,” Bruce acquiesces easily. They talk about how Tim is finding school, which teachers he likes and which are dicks, and how he likes his dorm. Tim is feeling pretty close to normal by the time they reach Gotham City, Bruce searching for somewhere to eat while debating with Tim the various burger joints they could go to, when Tim cracks. 

“I had sex,” he blurts out, and almost immediately regrets it. His heart pounds wildly in his chest, and he braces for awkward silence to fill the car, or for Bruce to laugh and congratulate him. Neither happens. 

Bruce looks at him quietly, and waits for him to go on. 

“It was, it was fine, I guess. I mean, I liked it, obviously. It’s sex.” Still Bruce says nothing. “It didn't feel, like, wrong or anything,” Tim adds a little desperately, and then winces at how that comes out. “I mean—”

“Tim.” Bruce says. 

“Okay, so it might have felt a little wrong. But that’s normal for the first time, right? And, I dunno, it felt like it was happening to me but also not, at the same time? Shit I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m being stupid, right? Everyone likes sex.”

Bruce pulls into a parking space by a small burger joint they sometimes frequent. He turns off the car, and the silence is jarring. Bruce is looking at Tim thoughtfully, as though solving a difficult case in his head, and the light from the diner softens his face and throws the dashboard into dark shadows. 

“Tim,” he asks carefully. “Why do you think everyone wants to have sex.”

Tim stared. His brow furrowed together. “Umm, because I’m not stupid, Bruce,” he offered. “Literally everyone I know is in a relationship, and it’s practically all the guys at GU will talk about. And I know you've had about seven girlfriends just this year so don’t try to fool me. You have to be pretty fucked in the head to not like sex.” 

Bruce drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, a nervous tic he stopped almost as soon as it began, and opened the door of the car abruptly. “Let’s talk about this inside,” he says shortly, and Tim agrees in a vaguely bewildered way. 

They enter the diner and place their orders, finding a booth at the corner of the restaurant. It is empty except for them, with soft warm lighting and booths ideal for privacy. They sit at opposite sides of the table, food not yet ready, and Tim fiddles a little at the hem of his sleeve. 

“So here’s a story,” Bruce begins, and Tim looks up, confused as to where this is going. “There was once a boy, a little like you, who always felt different from his peers, an outcast because he didn’t quite understand the appeal when they started dating and fooling around in locked cars. To him, it seemed like nothing more than a boring and slightly revolting exchange of saliva. As he got older, he realized the romantic part didn’t appeal much to him either, so he never got married and never started a family. This man wandered around for a bit, working odd jobs, working as an actor in a theater troupe at one point, before he finally stumbled across a wealthy family who were very much in need of a butler. Then, after his employers were murdered,” Tim snaps his head back up, and Bruce’s eyes are cold, “this man was kind enough to take in a boy he didn’t quite know what to do with and raise him as his own. So I would be a little more careful with throwing around words like fucked in the head,” Tim winced, “when you talk about people who do not want nor require sex.” 

“Shit, Bruce,” Tim breathed. 

Tim reaches for his soda at the table, throat suddenly dry, but he must still be drunker than he thought because his heavy hand knocks it over and it’s spilling all over his arms. “Shit, shit, sorry I’ll clean it up,” and Bruce is helping him mop it up. “I’m sorry, I’ll just—”

“Bathroom,” Bruce suggests, and Tim nods. 

They go together, and Tim attempts to wash the drink off his sleeves while Bruce leans against the side of a stall door. Tim finishes up, and looks at himself in the mirror. He has gray circles under his eyes, and he seems somehow different to himself than when his home was the Titans and he knew his place was by Kons side. 

“I think,” he announces, “that I am very, very drunk.” 

“Oh yeah,” Bruce says, and he is holding his arms out. Tim all but collided into them, arms enveloping his body and Bruce’s chin on top of his head. 

“I’m sorry I said— what I said before. I didn’t mean it. It’s just so stupid,” he says, sniffling, “I can take out the freaking penguin with one arm tied behind my back but I can’t even get through a stupid college party without having a panic attack.”

“I know,” Bruce says, rubbing his hand along Tim’s back. “It will get easier. You had years of practice in one of those things, and you are just now trying to figure out how to have a normal life. Give it time.” 

“Okay,” Tim says. 

“And Tim?” Bruce leans back a little to look at his face. “You do not in any way need to have sex if you don’t want to. There is no rule that says you have to enjoy it. You can have sex when or if you want to, and no sooner.”

“Promise?” Tim asks.

“Promise,” Bruce says, his eyes grave. “And,” he adds, tucking his chin over Tim’s head once more, “if it ever seems like too much is going on, I’m just a call away. I can drive up, and we’ll spend the day together, just like when you were Robin.”

“Okay,” Tim says again. “Hey Bruce,” he says. “We made a pretty damn good team way back when, didn’t we?”

“The best,” Bruce says, finally stepping away and chucking him under the chin fondly. “I think there’s two burgers out there with our names on them. Come on,” and he put an arm around Tim’s shoulders and led him to the booth. 

They eat quietly, Tim with gusto and Bruce considerably less so. Bruce’s arm doesn’t leave Tim’s shoulders once, and after Tim is done with his food he leans into Bruce and chases away all the shitty memories of the day with the warm presence of the man he considers a father by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: brief description of sex scene in which one party is not enjoying it and has a panic attack and self loathing thoughts afterwards


End file.
